You need to have a blog, website, About.me, Google+, Facebook presence that is overflowing with anecdotes, how to tips, video tutorials, comparison charts, educational information, debate, assertions, affirmations, research results -- related to your expertise or talents.

You must become Top of Mind Choice when anybody thinks about a problem your service can solve.

You must prove yourself to be creative, intelligent, social, leading edge, authentic, authoritative, specialized, tech-empowered, and trustworthy.

You do this via what you post online in easily findable web real estate.

You do this by considering everything you do to be ultimately PR, Advertising, Sales, Marketing, Recruitment, Job-oriented.

If you seek a job, learn what recruiters are saying about how they find top talent. If you seek to fill a position, find out how workers are talking about that job description and career path.

QUOTE

First, it’s important to understand that employee retention isn’t an initiative, a program or a project. It needs to be a way of life. As managers, executives and business owners, we often spend a great deal of time and expense marketing our company to our prospective clients, our current clients, and even our communities. With that said, it’s incredibly common to forget to market your company to your most important audience — your employees.

While salary and overall compensation are important to just about all professionals, can you guess the number one reason I hear when I ask people why they want to leave their current role?

Give up? The answer is boredom or stagnation. People either feel unchallenged, dead-ended or don’t have visibility into the long-term plan of the company.

Saturday, December 27, 2014

Here's what I think is the most amusing dialogue on social media, specifically Facebook, of the year.

(Re: Ars Technica article on Blackberry releasing new retro model.)

Steve Schonberger

If this had been available when I bought my current Android phone, I would have bought it. I still miss the hardware keyboard on my old Blackberry Bold, but not enough to go back to a niche product.

Unlike · Reply · 1 · Yesterday at 9:26pm

Jennifer Reed Schonberger

I think you like it because you were using your blackberry in the movie theater and pissing me off while the previews were running. When you turned your phone off I said, "Thank you" very sarcastically. Thus our love affair began.

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

There is some speculation that the hacker of Sony Pictures was a disgruntled employee. They've done it before and this attack has some characteristics of an inside job.

A professional in the field gives some insight about this in the Daily Mail.

QUOTE

Cybersecurity expert Hemanshu Nigam told the Hollywood Reporter that he finds it hard to believe that North Korea is the perpetrator and instead thinks it is more probable that it was the actions of an employee or ex-employee with administrative access privileges.

"For the studio — which has laid off hundreds of employees over the past year in an effort to contain costs — the possibility of a disgruntled employee wreaking havoc is very real.

If terabytes of data left the Sony networks, their network detection systems would have noticed easily," explains Nigam.

"It would also take months for a hacker to figure out the topography of the Sony networks to know where critical assets are stored and to have access to the decryption keys needed to open up the screeners that have been leaked.

Hackers don't use such things as Hushmail, Dropbox and Facebook when they want to engage in what amounts to criminal activity. Real hackers know that these sites collect access logs, IP addresses and work with law enforcement. It is possible that North Korean-sponsored hackers were working with someone on the inside. But it is more likely a ruse to shift blame, knowing the distaste the North Korean regime has for Sony Pictures."

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Brogrammers are merrily bashing North Korea and feeling virile as they do it.

(BROther proGRAMMER) A macho programmer. A brogrammer is tongue-in-cheek slang for a high-tech geek who works out a lot in the gym, is popular with the opposite sex, likes to party and is admired by his buddies for his flair and super coolness. To affect the look, brogrammers are known to wear sunglasses a lot of the time.

Others say brogrammers aren't so lucky in love, but like to wildly exaggerate their romantic adventures (assuming they have any) while preventing females from entering the tech field cave they inhabit in cubicles or long desks.

Blaming the Sony hack on North Korea gives the digital druid brogrammers a grandiose opportunity to mock a small cultish dictatorship and brag about supposed US superiority because we invented the Internet.

But they don't appear to grasp just how vulnerable US corporate networks are, due to resistance to investing in adequate up-to-date network security, risky email distributions, and socially engineered users.

Saturday, December 20, 2014

Due to the precedent established by the Sony Pictures hack and subsequent decision to not release "The Interview," more Hollywood executives have followed suit and halted the release of a rash of new and eagerly anticipated films.

Upcoming movie releases that have now been canceled:

How to Brainwash Your Dragon: canceled due to green technology environmentalist claims that fire breathing dragons cause global warming and should not be trained, hypnotized, or even allowed to exist.

Twilight of the Moon Orbiting the Planet of the Apes: canceled due to rumors that PETA fanatics threatened to show up in suicide vests -- or at least lime green leisure suits.

The Hunger Games: Mocking Jay Leno: canceled due to serious concerns about the possible jealousy of David Letterman, who resents the fact that no movie has ever had his name in it.

Enter Duller (sequel to Interstellar): canceled due to junk science related to rogue astronauts who travel through warped and worn-out worm holes to discover planets that are far more boring than planet Earth.

The Eggo Movie: canceled due to militant vegans threatening to stage Die Ins all over the USA in protest against building things with non-nutritive waffles (that were originally called "Froffles" -- a portmanteau of "frozen waffles") that smell and taste like real eggs or GMO derivatives.

Annie (Gets Her Gun and Kills a Rogue Cop): canceled due to concerns that racial unrest and militarized law enforcement might clash in peaceful but disconcerting confrontations where nobody's sure what rights anybody has.

Saving Private Ryan's Mom: cancelled immediately after theaters realized the entire film involved the concept of mothers who join their sons in war, which was very similar to terror, but with more rock music, beer, and flag waving.

The Theory of Nothing: canceled due to fears that astro-physicists would revolt in acts of unseemly immoral calculations when they found out the film focuses on Steven Hawking arguing with Richard Dawkins about whether we should worship a Magic Big Bang or an ancient pseudo-deity called Random Chance Operationus.

Forrest Gump in The Matrix Unloaded: canceled due to fears that activists who protest the unsympathetic portrayal of a mentally challenged person might use boxes of chocolates as dirty bombs in diabetes clinics.

Mrs. Doubtfire Returns (And Doubts Fire): cancelled due to junk science deniers related to piles of evidence that fire does indeed exist and had to have been invented by lab-coated technicians, plus reports about a creaking theater entrance door that sounded like a terrorist attack (even though Keith said he closed it quietly).

The Unequalizer: canceled due to the convoluted math involved that might cause Common Core to appear to be a Cuban plot to separate children from their parents, who still can't figure out New Math venn diagrams, modular arithmetic, algebraic inequalities, matrices, symbolic logic, Boolean algebra, and abstract algebra.

Batman & Robin Go to Disneyworld: cancelled by studio executives who found the pair looked too "romantically intertwined" which might provoke Westboro Church to bomb theatres or at least boo and hiss at those who stood in line to buy tickets.

There is growing skepticism that anybody really KNOWS who hacked Sony Pictures.

It's extremely strange, and possibly unprofessional, to state with certainty that North Korea is the culprit. Since investigations are classified, it's hard to know what the sudden assertions are based on.

* The hackers initially emailed Sony executives days before the “skull attack”, and demanded money. No mention of “The Interview”, no mention of North Korea.

* The hackers then plastered grisly skull images over Sony computers, and threatened to release the company’s data unless their demands were not met. No mention of “The Interview”, no mention of North Korea.

* Suddenly the media, following the Re/code report, starts linking the attack to “The Interview” and North Korea.

If it was all a plot by North Korea (or N. Korean sympathisers) to attack Sony because of the movie, why didn’t the initial demands or the malware mention this?

Similarities have been drawn between the Sony Pictures attack and the DarkSeoul malware that hit South Korean broadcasters in 2013. That attack wasn’t shy of using skull imagery either.

And, if unnamed White House sources are now pointing an accusatory finger at North Korea we need to ask ourselves:

* Why are they unnamed sources? Why won’t they go on the record? What do they hope to gain by making the claims anonymously?

* What proof do the US authorities have that North Korea is behind the attack?

* How do the US authorities explain the malware and the demands not making a reference to the movie or N Korea? (Yes, we know that a later anonymous PasteBin post started ranting about the movie and made 9/11 threats.)

"All I know from police investigations into cybercrime is that they are incredibly complex and can often take years. To complete this kind of investigation, the US would need the support of North Korea to look at the computer that made the attack. Hackers can make it look like they are coming from North Korea when they are really coming from Belgium, or the computer could be compromised and a computer in North Korea could be being controlled from somewhere else. To make this announcement so quickly seems a bit rushed."

Cyber security expert Mark W. Rogers gives 10 reasons why it probably was NOT North Korea that hacked Sony Pictures. This article is buttressed with links to other cyber security experts who are also extremely skeptical about the FBI's rash accusations.

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

I'm doing SEO and blogging for a brand new accounting firm with a brand new website.

If you understand SEO even a little, you know that a brand new website takes a long time to curry favor with Google, because Google doesn't trust new websites, and factors their lack of longevity as a negative SEO value.

This is because spammers generate new websites all the time, as Google catches on to their black hat gimmicks and removes them from search results pages.

So my client has a website that is only about 2 months old and does not have very many blog posts yet. Regarding competitors, Manta lists 83 accounting firms in Peoria, IL. There are more than that, businesses who are not listed on the Manta directory.

I'm happy to state that tonight, using "small business accounting peoria il" as search query, my client ranks #2 on page 4 of search results, in other words, #42 already. The goal, of course, is to rank #1 on page 1, but this is an excellent start for a new website and a new company.

This means that already my client has defeated half of his competitors in this search category. They have beat 41 competitors for this search query. And we have only just begun.

SEO is never an instant success story, especially for a brand new company with a brand new website. So we are very excited and happy to see this great start for their ongoing SEO program.

(21) What kinds of non-stock photos do you need from me and how do you plan to use them on my website?

(22) What kind of Contact form do you plan to use?

(23) Where will you put the business address, phone number, etc.?

(24) How will you implement social sharing links (like, share, plus one, retweet) for my business Facebook page, GooglePlus, Twitter, YouTube, etc.? How will you link to my social media pages?

(25) How will you make my website mobile friendly (mobile optimization)?

(26) What CMS (content management system) will you use? WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, proprietary? NOTE: Proprietary CMS is often used to trap you into a CMS that only the designer understands, so you can't leave. Other times proprietary CMS is created to accommodate a client's non-standard needs.

(27) How will you implement a blog for my website?

(28) Do you plan to use Flash or iFrames? (These are not good for SEO.)

(29) How will you implement a site search functionality (for larger websites)?

(30) How will you implement internal linking?

(31) How will you format content to comply with Google Hummingbird semantic search?

Monday, December 15, 2014

"Our top competitor isn't blogging or using Facebook -- so why should we? They're very successful without it."

My answer: Because this is a vulnerability of your competitor. You can take advantage of their cluelessness about social media. You can be better than your competitor.

Slavishly imitating a competitor is a sure way to destroy your own business. That successful competitor may be bankrupt a year from now. They may be doing many things right, but some things wrong, and if you imitate the things they do wrong, you'll suffer for it.

A consultant like myself will analyze the competitor and find the Achilles heels.

I fear that the 3 main reasons a business resists promoting themselves on Facebook or a blog are:

(1) They just don't care about customers as people with needs. Customers are just wallets that open. They don't want to engage in conversations with them, or provide their expertise to them. They just want to customers to spend money, without the CEO having to have any human warmth or social interaction with them.

(2) They think "if we build it, they will come." That silly phrase is used to justify not having SEO and not blogging. So their website just sits there, with nobody coming to it. They don't understand that Google wants to see fresh, original, relevant, frequent content -- not a static website with sparse content, no News page, no new information.

A blog is a great way to grind out fantastic content, that Google will take into consideration when driving customers to websites that seem relevant and up to date.

They don't understand the marketing power of blogging, they don't want to spend time writing blog posts, they aren't good writers, or they don't want to pay someone to write good blog posts for them.

(3) They believe in old fashioned media, like TV and radio commercials. They don't understand how wasteful those investments can be. They don't understand that their customers are on Facebook and are influencing each other about what to buy.

Chris also said that many big SEO clients are re-writing their hobbled together websites to comply with new search engine algorithms and rules. Many websites of larger companies have been stitched together without much rhyme or reason, due to departmental feuds and time constraints.

It's good to re-write corporate fluff into engaging, customer-centric content.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

New troll variety spotted in the wild -- the Inspirational Quote Troll.

First seen, by this researcher, on Facebook.

I saw this long string of inspirational quotes and their authors, all jammed together, in a long unbroken block of text, being deposited as a comment by The Amazing Post user on Facebook.

The dense cluster of inspirational text was on a The New York Times thread about insomnia leading to dementia.

The comment also included a direct link to The Amazing Post's profile page on Facebook, so the comment was clearly a misguided attempt to, not participate in the topic, but to drive people to their Facebook page.

This falls into the category of the Lazy Underachieving Troll species.

Instead of structuring an insincere abusive argument designed to be inflammatory, these Inspirational Quote Trolls copy some group of positive affirmations.

Then they hop around, pasting the clipboard text wherever they feel like disrupting an online conversation, but without exerting much effort.

What's this world coming to when even the criminals and spammers are miserable slackers? Have they no pride anymore?

Very similar to the Recipe Troll that I told you about a few days ago, which posts actual recipes and cooking instructions (prefaced with "I don't know what to post as a comment, so I'll just give you my recipe for blueberry muffins") as comments.

Being disruptive, but in a very slothful manner.

My comment is that dementia is more often caused by dosing non-psychiatric nursing home patients with anti-psychotics to make them easier to manage.

And now...

Here is the actual Inspirational Quote Troll spam, in its entirety:

QUOTE

“Just know, when you truly want success, you’ll never give up on it. No matter how bad the situation may get.” - Unknown“Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else.” – Les Brown“I don’t regret the things I’ve done, I regret the things I didn’t do when I had the chance.” –Unknown“Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” - Joshua J. Marine“Its hard to wait around for something you know might never happen; but its harder to give up when you know its everything you want.” – Unknown“One of the most important keys to Success is having the discipline to do what you know you should do, even when you dont feel like doing it.” - Unknown“Good things come to those who wait… greater things come to those who get off their ass and do anything to make it happen.” - Unknown“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, or worn. It is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace & gratitude.” - Denis Waitley“In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.” – Bill Cosby“Go where you are celebrated – not tolerated. If they can’t see the real value of you, it’s time for a new start.” – UnknownDont be afraid to stand for what you believe in, even if that means standing alone.. - Unknown“The best revenge is massive success.” – Frank Sinatra“Forget all the reasons it won’t work and believe the one reason that it will.” - Unknown“I am thankful for all of those who said NO to me. Its because of them I’m doing it myself.” –Albert Einstein“The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.” – Steve Jobs“Life is short, live it. Love is rare, grab it. Anger is bad, dump it. Fear is awful, face it. Memories are sweet, cherish it.” – Unknown“When you say “It’s hard”, it actually means “I’m not strong enough to fight for it”. Stop saying its hard. Think positive!” - Unknown“Life is like photography. You need the negatives to develop.” - Unknown“Don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.” – Jack Canfield“The pain you feel today is the strength you feel tomorrow. For every challenge encountered there is opportunity for growth.” - Unknown“Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” – Farrah Gray“The only thing that stands between you and your dream is the will to try and the belief that it is actually possible.” – Joel Brown“Self confidence is the most attractive quality a person can have. how can anyone see how awesome you are if you can’t see it yourself?” – Unknown“We learn something from everyone who passes through our lives.. Some lessons are painful, some are painless.. but, all are priceless.” - Unknown“Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. it means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.” - Unknown“Nobody ever wrote down a plan to be broke, fat, lazy, or stupid. Those things are what happen when you don’t have a plan.” – Larry Winget“Three things you cannot recover in life: the WORD after it’s said, the MOMENT after it’s missed and the TIME after it’s gone. Be Careful!” – Unknown“Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.” – Carl Bard“When the past calls, let it go to voicemail, believe me, it has nothing new to say.” - Unknown“Rule #1 of life. Do what makes YOU happy.” - Unknown“Walk away from anything or anyone who takes away from your joy. Life is too short to put up with fools.” – Unknown“Love what you have. Need what you want. Accept what you receive. Give what you can. Always remember, what goes around, comes around…” – Unknwon“Just remember there is someone out there that is more than happy with less than what you have.” – Unknown“The biggest failure you can have in life is making the mistake of never trying at all.” – Unknown“Life has two rules: #1 Never quit #2 Always remember rule # 1.” - Unknown“No one is going to hand me success. I must go out & get it myself. That’s why I’m here. To dominate. To conquer. Both the world, and myself.” - Unknown# Like_Like_like https://www.facebook.com/TheAmazingPost?ref=tn_tnmn

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

HTML5, Google Hummingbird Semantic Search, Linked Data, and Structured Markup -- how the web is moving from web page to data set as the atomic unit.

This is the path to competitive superiority, via enriched SERP snippets.

Enriched SERP snippets -- that's where your SEO focus should be now. Schema.org structured markup in your HTML5 website code is how to get there.

Google Webmasters explains "snippets":

QUOTE

Snippets—the few lines of text that appear under every search result—are designed to give users a sense for what’s on the page and why it’s relevant to their query.

If Google understands the content on your pages, we can create rich snippets—detailed information intended to help users with specific queries.

For example, the snippet for a restaurant might show the average review and price range; the snippet for a recipe page might show the total preparation time, a photo, and the recipe’s review rating; and the snippet for a music album could list songs along with a link to play each song.

These rich snippets help users recognize when your site is relevant to their search, and may result in more clicks to your pages.

END QUOTE

The web is evolving from being a system of interconnected documents (web pages) to a set of linked data.

Web pages have been linking to each other from the beginning. Now data sets within web pages, and in other types of content, are being linked. So they will benefit from detailed instructions to search engines, code that will further explain the data set embedded in, or converted into, HTML.

Microdata, semantic web, structured data, it all relates to more specifically identifying, and differentiating, the information found on a web page. The end goal is for people to more quickly and accurately find the information they seek on the internet.

This will help clear up any confusion about a name being the name of a record label, or the name of a fruit, or the name of a company in any particular usage of "apple," for a simplistic example. It goes much deeper, into the intricate aspects of store hours, location, founder of company, product offer expiration date, types of payment accepted, and so forth.

One of the controversial issues regarding this markup is how some have figured out how to spam it, adding unverified glowing reviews from spurious review sites, thus adding 5 stars to the "aggregate rating."

This deconstruction of web content is a revision of Tim Berners-Lee's original idea of the web page as the atomic unit of the web. Microdata for semantic purposes means that the data set, as few as one word or an entire tome, is now the new atom in the web universe.

This fits in perfectly with the Google Hummingbird semantic search engine that was installed recently. Google is now paying more attention to the intention of a search query, than to the keywords used.

Google wants to be able to correctly guess that a give instance of "silver apples" is referring to an early electronic band, not a decorative item sold at Hobby Lobby. Or that "place for Italian" means a restaurant that serves spaghetti, not a class teaching the Italian language.

So now SEOs, web content developers and internet marketers must think about not just the major theme and keyword density of a web page, but also the building blocks of that page content.

How that web page content can be subdivided into individual questions and answers, like an FAQ, but beyond that -- into the realm of all the minutiae of corporate structure, product types, offer packages, date founded, logo, parent organization, and other small, precise details.

Even within the About Us page, for example, there can be subsections (or subpages) on Company History, Founder's Welcome, Annual Report, Mission Statement, Staff Bios, Financial Data, Community Engagement, Associations, Photo Gallery, TV Commercial Videos, and so on.

This is part of the semantic web, where search engines understand more deeply what you're looking for, and why you're looking for it, what your intentions are, rather than just what keywords are being used.

Think of it as your website having a heart-to-heart talk with Google, patiently and meticulously explaining what is content is and means and for what kinds of customers it's best suited.

Schema.org is the structural microdata that needs to be implemented in websites for eventual search ranking improvements, matching customer queries, and enriching SERP (search engine results page) snippets (bits of content describing the web page and motivating people to click on the link).

Add Schema.org structured markup to your top priority webpages, then all pages. Your list of major SEO values must now include micro data.

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Why SEO Gives You Marketing Superiority

SEO is mysterious to most business people and web designers. It requires extensive reading and experimentation. SEO is easily bungled. Some mistakes can be incredibly expensive, or time-consuming, to fix.

Chances are, your competitors, even the largest, are either not doing SEO or they're doing it with out-of-date techniques or even old, dubious gimmicks that no longer work.

You can prove this yourself.

Just use any free SEO tool, like the SEO Quake diagnostic tool to do an evaluation. Just paste their website URL into the tool.

Use it on any competitor's website. Pick one that's wildly successful, one you would bet is doing SEO fantastically. You'll probably see many SEO violations, errors, or missed opportunities.

I'll bet the HTML title, meta description, and H tags are misconfigured. This is extremely common. Or perhaps there are a lot of img alt attributes missing from their photos. Maybe they have no site map, robots protocols, web feed, favicon, or Google analytics installed.

Their content may be poorly written. There may not be sufficient information to explain a topic, issue, problem, need, process, or product. Slim content is not valued as highly as rich, keyword-savvy content that matches a customer search query.

If your competitor has no blog, then they're not grinding out fresh, frequent, relevant content. Your company can now exploit this deficiency by hiring a professional with expertise in your field to blog regularly. Google seeks recent, well written, authoritative content that is original and not being duplicated all over the internet.

Website content also tends to be "we-oriented". It's not written as a conversation with a customer, but rather it's presented as corporate bragging.

We have the best products and selection. We have this great facility. We do this and that. We've been around a long time. We provide superior service. We have affordable prices. We. We. We. All the way home.

Customer-centric web content results in more sales and brand loyalty. Use "you" and "your" as much as possible and translate specifications and features into real world, simplified benefit statements. Use strong calls to action.

Each mistake by your competitor is a serious vulnerability. Each bad SEO choice they make is an opportunity for your website to be better than theirs, and to attract more qualified customer traffic to your business.

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

How to make advertisements for your SEO services.

SEO is Super Earthy Operation.

It's getting your website content down to earth, where the rubber meets the road, "getting dirty" and sometimes it's messy and challenging, way down there, deep into the Real World...where the customer lives.